A common problem encountered at social gatherings such as picnics, parties, and receptions where food is served while the guests are standing is the difficulty of holding both a plate of food and a beverage, while at the same time keeping a hand free with which to eat. Often diners will resort to setting down their beverage on any nearby flat surface, or will awkwardly try to hold both their plate and cup in the same hand.
Over the years many variations of combination plate and cup holders have been designed seeking to address this problem. The basic goals that designers have attempted to meet are the need for an easily-held plate that securely retains a cup or beverage can, but which is not top heavy, can be sat on a flat surface if desired, and is inexpensive to manufacture and ship. Existing designs all fail to meet at least one of these goals.
An example of an early design is Leppke (U.S. Pat. No. 2,107,381), which discloses a "dutch lunch" plate having a central cup holder with food compartments arranged radially around the cup holder. In Leppke, the cup is placed significantly above the plane of the plate, making the combination of a full plate of food and a full cup top heavy with a significant potential for tipping and spillage. The plate in Leppke is also no easier to hold than a standard dinner plate; a diner has the choice of holding it from the edge, with a thumb in one of the food compartments, or of resting it precariously in the palm of one hand.
A more recent design, Beck (U.S. Pat. No. 5,441,164), discloses an improvement over Leppke. In Beck, the center of gravity of the combined plate and cup is lowered by providing cutout in the central cup holder for the handle of a cup, allowing a coffee cup or other cup having a handle to sit deeper in the cupholder and therefore closer to the plate, and to be more firmly retained than in Leppke. Beck, however, did not address the problem of making the plate itself easier to hold.
Designers have followed several different approaches in seeking to develop an easily held combination plate and cup holder. Raiser (U.S. Pat. No. 2,240,020) from 1937 shows a combined plate and cup holder in which the cup holder extends below the plate, giving the diner a more convenient and stable means of holding the plate. The Raiser design is also stackable, although a separate spacer element in the cup holder must be removed before stacking. Albeit more convenient for a standing diner, the Raiser plate cannot be stably rested on a flat surface, particularly if loaded with food, due to the small base of the cup holder. A more recent patent, Patterson, et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,292,028) discloses a similar concept, in which a common beverage can may be attached to the bottom of a plate, the beverage can thus serving as a means of holding both the can and the plate. Patterson requires that the diner drink through a straw, however, and would have similar stability problems as Raiser when rested on a flat surface.
A different approach is disclosed by Harper (U.S. Pat. No. 4,461,396), in which a hole is provided in the plate, allowing the combined plate and glass holder to be grasped like an artist's palette, with the diner's thumb placed through the hole with the rest of the diner's hand placed beneath the plate. The diner's thumb can rest on the base of a stemware glass placed in the shallow cupholder, providing somewhat tenuous support for the glass. A similar design is used in Sampson (Des. U.S. Pat. No. 366,817), which physically resembles an artist's palette, and incorporates a second hole into which a tapered cup may be placed.
Yet a third approach is disclosed in Donche (U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,952), which utilizes a sleeve on the bottom of the plate, into which the diner places his fingers, thus "wearing" the plate in a similar manner to a baseball catcher's mitt. The Donche design succeeds in providing a more stable means of holding the plate, but trades off ease of manufacture and storage, since the design comprises several assembled pieces and is not stackable.
In addition to providing a secure means to hold a cup or beverage can and being easy to hold, simplicity of manufacture is important. Designs consisting of an assemblage of separate parts, or having complex shapes, may be prohibitively expensive to manufacture. In many social situations it is desirable that the plates, cups, and dinnerware used by guests be disposable, both to save the cost of cleanup and because the social event may be a one-time event and no reuse of the items is contemplated. To provide a combined plate and cup holder that is affordable to the consumer as a disposable item, it is important that it be simple to manufacture, and that the items "nest" together compactly for shipping, storage, and sale.